Going beyond demographics

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With audience research, brand managers often rely on traditional insights—demographics, interests, and purchase behavior. While these remain crucial, they don’t tell the complete story of how consumers engage with brands in the real world. There are deeper, richer behavioral insights that often go unnoticed, yet they hold immense potential for enhancing brand strategies, particularly in Out-of-Home (OOH) advertising.

Anusha Kannan is a Data Strategy Manager with over 8 years of experience in the Adtech industry. With a strong international background spanning North America, APAC, and EMEA, she brings deep expertise in data science, measurement, and analytics and specializes in optimizing OOH campaigns to drive meaningful audience engagement. She emphasizes the importance of looking beyond traditional audience metrics:

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In this article, we will introduce 3 audience insights that can elevate your brand’s targeting and engagement strategies.

Table of contents

1. App usage behavior in specific contexts
2. Place visits: Behavioral location insights
3. Seasonal & event-driven engagement
4. Turning insights into action

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Key takeaways

• Go beyond demographics: Behavioral insights provide deeper audience understanding.
• Context matters: App usage patterns reveal key moments for targeted OOH placements.
• Location insights add precision: Analyzing why and how often consumers visit places improves ad relevance.
• Capitalize on micro-seasons: Events like marathon season or back-to-school shifts create unique marketing opportunities.
• Leverage analytics: Tools like billups Analytics™ provide data-driven insights to measure and optimize campaigns effectively.

Behavioral insights that can transform your brand strategy

1. App usage behavior in specific contexts

Brands often analyze app usage at a high level—social media engagement, shopping behaviors, or time spent on specific platforms. However, a crucial layer is missing: the context in which users engage with these apps.

For example, how does mobile banking app usage spike in financial districts during rush hour? How do fitness tracking apps trend near running trails or gyms? These behavioral patterns provide powerful cues for brands to align their messaging with real-world consumer moments.

Why It Matters:

Understanding when and where consumers engage with certain apps enables hyper-contextual targeting. A fintech brand could place OOH ads for investment tools near commuter hubs where financial app engagement peaks. A sportswear brand could promote products near fitness hotspots where users frequently interact with health-tracking apps. By aligning messaging with these contextual behaviors, brands can make their ads feel more relevant and timely.

2. Place visits: Behavioral location insights

Location targeting has long been a staple of OOH advertising, but most brands stop at broad data points—urban centers, shopping malls, or entertainment districts. Traditional targeting can miss the deeper behavioral context behind place visits—not just where people go, but why and how frequently they visit specific locations.

For example, imagine a health-focused snack brand. Broadly targeting gyms might seem logical, but behavioral location data reveals that consumers visiting specific boutique fitness studios, like those offering yoga or Pilates, also frequent organic grocery stores and health food cafes. This suggests a more health-conscious, mindful consumer, distinct from those who primarily visit large chain gyms. Understanding these nuances allows the snack brand to tailor messaging to appeal to this audience's focus on natural ingredients, mindful eating, and holistic well-being, rather than simply emphasizing protein and performance.

Why It Matters:

By analyzing behavioral location data, brands can create more precise geographic placements of ads. If a brand discovers that eco-conscious consumers frequently visit sustainable stores, placing OOH ads near green spaces, farmers’ markets, or eco-friendly retail hubs could deepen brand affinity and reinforce messaging. Similarly, brands targeting business travelers could leverage insights from frequent airport visits to optimize placements near hotels, coworking spaces, or transit stations.

3. Seasonal & event-driven engagement (beyond major holidays)

Most brands build their marketing calendars around the key annual holidays—Black Friday, Christmas, or back-to-school season. However, micro-seasons and event-driven engagement patterns—such as sports seasons, regional fairs, and niche community events—are often overlooked, despite their potential to create highly targeted and contextually relevant brand connections.

Consider marathon season, which attracts a surge of fitness-conscious individuals to specific locations, or college move-in weekends, which temporarily increase demand for home essentials and food delivery services. Even subtle seasonal transitions, like the shift from summer to fall, influence consumer behaviors—impacting everything from fashion and food preferences to travel and lifestyle choices.

Why It Matters:

Event-driven marketing fosters timely, relevant, and personalized connections, increasing engagement and brand recall. By aligning messaging with these less obvious but highly impactful moments, brands can maximize their relevance and resonance.

Aligning messaging with these less obvious but highly relevant moments can create more personalized and effective ad placements. A sports brand, for instance, could capitalize on marathon season by placing hydration or performance gear ads along popular training routes. Similarly, a home goods retailer could tailor messaging around college move-in season, targeting ads near campuses or dormitory supply stores.
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4. Turning insights into action

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Identifying these overlooked insights is one thing—turning them into actionable strategies is another. To effectively leverage these audience insights, brands need advanced analytics tools that see beyond traditional demographic data. billups Analytics™ provides a suite of data and measurement tools  necessary to ensure OOH advertising is placed in the right locations and resonates with the right audiences, featuring powerful attribution studies to accurately assess campaign performance. 

billups Attribution Studies help brands assess how their OOH campaigns are performing by tracking audience movement and engagement. By analyzing foot traffic lift or web and app outcomes, brands can determine if the ads placement is driving consumer behavior effectively.

For brand managers looking to enhance their strategy, these untapped audience insights provide a new dimension of targeting and personalization—one that moves beyond traditional demographics and into real-world behavioral engagement. By leveraging these insights, brands can create smarter, more effective campaigns that resonate with audiences in the right place, at the right time, and with the right message.

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